According to Woofun AI, a Bitcoin address that has been silent for a long time since March 2020 broke its silence on October 12, transferring all of its 4581.94 BTC holdings to five new addresses, involving approximately $377 million in capital.
This move marks the official awakening of the giant whale after a six-year market cycle. Its position holding behavior spanned the complete stage from the beginning of the pandemic to recent macroeconomic turmoil, and has become a key sample for observing changes in the mentality of long-term holders.
The details of the transaction revealed precise fund allocation logic and amazing profit multiples. The transfer was confirmed at approximately 18:37 UTC in block 971,126, when Bitcoin was trading at around $82,350. The funds were split into five parts: each of the four receiving addresses received exactly 1000 BTC, and the fifth address received the remaining 581.94 BTC. The transaction paid a processing fee of 732 Satoshi. As a unit of 100 millionths of Bitcoin, this time the fee was about 60 cents. As of October 13, block 971,279, none of these five new addresses had produced any expenditure records, and the identity of the controller and its subsequent whereabouts remain a mystery.
As far back as March 3, 2020, the wallet was funded through a transaction that split the balance of 5081.95 BTC into three parts. The two other addresses each received 250 BTC, while the wallet received 4581.95 BTC. At about $8830 per bitcoin at the time, the initial value was around $40.5 million. After six years of accumulation, the current value has increased nearly tenfold. According to data compiled by Woofun AI, this cross-cycle compounding effect far exceeds that of most short-term speculative strategies.
The wallet's holding history is a miniature history of dealing with the market crisis. Soon after, the deposit was hit by the COVID-19 crisis, and the asset value plummeted from approximately $40.5 million to $17.6 million. Then, in May 2021, due to Tesla (TSLA.US) suspending Bitcoin payments, etc., its value dropped from a peak of about US$291 million in April to US$131 million in June.
In 2022, Terra, Celsius, and FTX collapsed one after another. Combined with the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike, the S&P 500 index fell by about 25%, and Bitcoin hit a two-year low. The wallet's value shrunk further to about $71 million, losing about $239 million compared to the November 2021 high. Recently, Trump's tariff shock caused severe market turmoil. Bitcoin fell 54% from its all-time high of $124,728 to $57,735, and the wallet's value dropped from $5715 million to about $265 million, but in the end, it still achieved a net gain of nearly 10 times.
On-chain traces show that the address received 22 dust transactions between August 2020 and May 2026, ranging from 546 Satoshi to 6,953 Satoshi, less than $6 each. Of these, 16 were batch transactions, and payments were made to 87 to 610 addresses in a single transaction. On January 28, 2025, an address beginning with 18VPNbpc and ending in pq9x sent 600 Satoshi, suspected to be an address poisoning attack, funded by a transaction that paid 1401 outputs on November 12, 2024.
Although other senders mostly use the bc1 address, which is very different from the wallet's old 18 address style, Giant Whale did not misoperate as a result.
The transfer behavior of giant whales is often interpreted by the market as a potential sell-off signal, but historical references show its complexity. In July 2025, an entity transferred 80,000 BTC worth $8.6 billion, which had been dormant for 14 years, setting a single-day record for 10-year or more coins. Ten days later, another Satoshi Nakamoto era wallet sent 40,009 BTC (about $4.7 billion) to Galaxy (GLXY.US), which then executed a sale of around $9 billion. In contrast, the 4581.94 BTC transferred this time is huge, but the receiving address is still silent. As of October 13, the original address left only 23,288 dust, or about $19.
This state of “only getting in and out” suggests that holders may be restructuring assets or migrating to cold wallets rather than immediately cashing out. In the context of heightened macroeconomic uncertainty, the patience and strategic adjustments of long-term holders will become key variables affecting market liquidity.